Stargazing
by Isabeau1
Summary: 2007movie Bumblebee spends an evening feeling a little homesick.


**Author's note:** Those of you who have read my other Transformers story know that I've pretty much disregarded Jazz's death at the end of the movie. I didn't like it, so I changed it.

* * *

Bumblebee was very still, feet hanging over the edge of the drop and weight resting back on his palms. Behind him Mikaela and Sam slept on a blanket. He could hear them breathing, Mikaela muttering about engine parts, and Sam's soft snoring. The night air was unusually clear for the time of year and filled with the smell of wild flowers and summer grass. Earth was a complex planet, full of unexpected subtleties and interconnections. 

Tonight though, Bumblebee was only interested in the sky.

He didn't stir at the purr of an approaching engine, or the sound of tires coming to a stop. Nor did the familiar sound of metal reshaping itself cause him to shift. Sam murmured in his sleep that it was too early to go home.

"Hey." Jazz sat down beside him, crossing his legs and tilting his head back, easily tracing Bumblebee's line of sight.

"Hey." Bumblebee's voice was quiet, scratchier then it had been before Tyger Pax.

Not surprising given that Ratchet still hadn't figured out why Bumblebee's voice capacitor was working at all. One last mystery the Allspark had left behind for them.

"It's clear tonight." Jazz offered.

Bumblebee nodded, his gaze remaining fixed. There was only one star in the sky that mattered to him, to any of them really.

"We'll never go home." Bumblebee's fingers curled in the soft dirt. "It might not even be there anymore."

"This is home now." Jazz said firmly, gaze dropping from the sky to the bot beside him.

Jazz had known Bumblebee longer then the human race had been in existence. He had known him longer then Optimus, or Ratchet, or Ironhide had. He knew when Bumblebee was down, and he knew when he got homesick, it wasn't home he was missing, it was the people who lived there, or used to live there anyway.

It was a sad fact that they were both acutely aware of. The light in the sky they looked at now was thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old. That small blue star was probably not even there any more, torn apart and long dead for lack of the Allspark that had once sustained it.

By the end, the war hadn't been about winning, or even surviving. The best they could hope for was the survival of other worlds, the foiling of Megatron's plans to spread his fear and madness to the rest of the universe.

Jazz supposed they had succeeded at that, but it had cost them an awful lot.

"So Optimus tells us." Bumblebee let his gaze fall to look down at the drop off. "It doesn't feel like home."

"It will." Jazz insisted. "The humans will get used to us and we wont have to play hide and seek with them anymore, and other autobots will answer Optimus's call, and we wont be so alone."

Jazz hoped. And hoped, and hoped, because somewhere, wandering among the stars, pigheadedly searching for something that didn't exist anymore, was his brother Prowl, he hoped.

"Prowl will show up. He's too single-minded to not find his way here sooner or later." Bumblebee had known Jazz just as long as Jazz had known Bumblebee. "Anyway, we're not alone, we're just not home. I guess…" Bumblebee faltered, his voice catching, which was just as likely to be a glitch in his voice capacitor as anything else. "I guess I just always hoped that when the war was over, we could go back to what we had before."

Back to the sister who had been killed in the first week of fighting, back to hoopball and dance clubs after work, back to a good day being defined by how smooth work had gone and how good the music was at the club afterwards, instead of by whether he had lost someone he cared about or not.

Back to all those things he would never have again.

With a sigh he let his head fall to rest on Jazz's shoulder.

"You gotta let it go Bee." Jazz's arm slid easily around the smaller bot's shoulders. "We can't go back."

"I know." Bumblebee nodded. "Doesn't stop me from wanting it."

"Me either." Jazz agreed.

They sat in silence until they heard the teenagers behind them start to wake.

"Ew, Mikaela drooled on me." Sam announced with a yawn.

"I did not." Mikaela slapped at him sleepily and rolled over.

Jazz and Bumblebee exchanged looks and started laughing.

"Hey Jazz." Sam greeted cheerfully, leaving Mikaela to wake up on her own. "When did you get here?"

"About half an hour ago." Jazz grinned at the human. "You slept right through it."

"That's because he was up all last night doing the homework he should have done a week ago." Bumblebee was more amused then reprimanding.

"Tattle tell." Sam responded good-naturedly and leaned against Bumblebee's leg. "Hey Jazz, you want to race home?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd beat you." Jazz said in amusement.

"Not if Bumblebee's driving." Sam replied confidently.

"He has a point." Bumblebee agreed.

"In your dreams." Jazz shook his head.

"On the record last time I checked." Bumblebee quipped back.

"Are you two racing?" Mikaela picked herself up and came over to them, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "I call shotgun on Jazz."

"The girls always did like me better." Jazz grinned as he got to his feet.

Bumblebee snorted and stood, stretching before he transformed. "Come on Sam." He popped the driver's side door open. "They don't stand a chance."

"Ha." Mikaela laughed as she waited for Jazz to transform.

"Count it down Sweetheart." Jazz said once she was settled in the driver's seat.

"Three…two…one" Mikaela's voice came clearly across Bumblebee's radio. "GO!"

Amidst shrieks of laughter and the skidding of tires both cars tore down the bluff and onto the back road, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust in their wake.


End file.
